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National Civic Forum
The Nationales Bürgerforum (National Civic Forum; NBF) was a right-wing populist political party in Hulstria and Gao-Soto, founded in 3622 and dissolved in 3651 through a merger with the Liberale Volkspartei (LVP), forming the Liberale Bürgerunion (LBU). The NBF's founding Chairman was Wilhelm "Willi Schauer", and its last Chairman was Werner Luscher, the then-Vice Staatsminister and Interior Minister. Although it was obviously on the political right, commentators were unable to pinpoint its exact ideological position (the party itself claimed to be unideological), as it drew on diverse and sometimes conflicting influences such as libertarianism, conservatism and nationalism. The NBF claimed to represent the interests of the ordinary citizen against various elites, which according to the party, controlled other Hulstrian and Gao-Soton political parties, and placed an emphasis on grassroots democracy. History Schauer (3622 - 3625) In late March, 3622, a three MdRs from the Liberale Volkspartei (LVP), joined by a fourth from the Hosianisch-Demokratisches Verbund (HDV), defected from their parties under the leadership of Edith Strötzel, who had served in the Reichstag as a member of the LVP since 3611, and announced that they would be establishing a new party. The Nationales Bürgerforum (NBF), as it was dubbed, was officially registered about two weeks later. In April, Wilhelm "Willi" Schauer, a prominent rural community leader, was persuaded by Strötzel to join the party and run for the leadership, and was elected Chairman at the end of the month. Shortly afterwards, two further defectors, this time from the left-wing Solidarität, joined the NBF. The NBF's first major political confrontation occurred when the Minister-President of Kuratha, Korbinian Meisnner of Solidarität, used the death of Mikado Okatori Akihiko as an opportunity to phase in a republic. This perceived insensitivity attracted aggressive criticism from the NBF, especially from the party's Deputy Chairman, Dustin Urbanek. The party supported a censure motion in the Reichstag and even organised large protests against Meisnner. The issue took a year to die down. In early August, 3623, Klaus Zinnberger, the former Vice Staatsminister, Agriculture Minister, Deputy Chairman of the LVP and Chairman of the Landbund, resigned from the Reichstag, leaving vacant his seat of Forstberg-Weitensfelde-Hügelland. The NBF fielded Satomi Tagawa, the former Director of the Air Medical Service, to run in the NBF's first electoral contest at the parliamentary level. After a vigorous campaign involving many of the most senior party figures, Tagawa won fifty-six thousand first preference votes (32.8%), which, after the distribution of preferences, increased to ninety-six thousand votes (58.5%), thus winning the by-election. Manewhile, earlier in 3623, the NBF launched a major campaign to attract working-class support to balance out its petty bourgeois and rural supporters. This campaign appeared to pay off in September 3624. Due to a scandal involving, most seriously, corruption, four councillors from Luthur, a left-wing stronghold, stepped down along with the Bürgermeister, and a fifth seat was left vacant when the President of the Stadrat became the Mayor. The NBF won three of the five seats, allowing the party to claim that it had struck a chord with the working-class constituency which it had been chasing. These successes led the NBF to pursue a concerted policy of trying to attrach disaffected working-class voters, concentrating on Kuratha, where many were disappointed with the government of Meisnner. The NBF played a prominent role in the 3625 campaign against Solidarität's controversial election promise to shut down all private schools, with Schauer offering especially harsh criticism of the policy, describing it as "depraved" and "malign". Schauer led protests and a letter-writing campaign against the policy, and spent so much time opposing the policy that he effectively left the running of the party to Parliamentary Leader Edith Strötzel for several weeks. Zinnberger (3625 - 3626) In mid May, 3625, Klaus Zinnberger dramatically announced that he would be joining the NBF, which gave the party a high-profile figure at its head. Additionally, eight MdRs from the LVP (most of them from the Landbund) followed their former leader into the NBF. Zinnberger launched the party's first manifesto, which also introduced its first official campaign slogan: The People's Party. According to a pre-arranged plan, Urbanek stepped down as Deputy Chairman, allowing Schauer to take his place, while Zinnberger became Chairman. The party grassroots overwhelmingly endorsed the plan in early June, allowing the party leadership to proceed with it. Zinnberger led the NBF into the general election of 3626. Although he managed to increase the party's representation in the Reichstag from fourteen members to sixty-seven members, he was unable to win a seat and return as an MdR (the party suffered an unexpected meltdown in Mitrania more generally); he therefore resigned as the NBF's Chairman and retired from politics a second time, claiming that, this time, it would be "for good". Strötzel (3626 - 3640) After the resignation of Zinnberger, many expected that Schauer would want to return to the position of Chairman, but he decided to re-contest the post of Deputy Chairman instead. As a result, a four-way race for the leadership eventuated, with Strötzel, the party's Parliamentary Leader, as the frontrunner. The other three candidates were Secretary-General Kuniko Fujita, Martha Hellwegge (the Mayor of Luthur) and Anton Mutschler (a veteran legislator). As expected, Strötzel came first by a substantial margin in the initial round, and eventually won the contest with an impressive majority. Mutschler was subsequently elected Parliamentary Leader, while Fujita remained Secretary-General and Schauer retained his post without a contest. Several months after the election, the Budenlar branch of the LVP and its NBF counterpart agreed to form a coalition, marking the first time that the NBF had entered government on a Crownland level. As the two parties were equal in seat share and also almost exactly equal in vote share (the LVP was ahead by less than a thousand votes in 9.3 million), the agreement stipulated that the LVP, led by the hardline libertarian Ekkehard Borkenstein (who deposed Harald Matsuyama as party leader shortly beforehand), would be the senior partner in the coalition for the first half of the electoral term, while the NBF would supply the Minister-President for the second half. Willi Schauer became Vice Minister-President in the expectation that he would swap jobs with Borkenstein after two-and-a-half years. The policies of the LVP-NBF government in Budenlar were highly controversial, especially in the field of education. Borkenstein commissioned a review of the cirriculum, stating that it was too biased towards the left, resulting in calls from hard-left Solidarität members for a school boycott. The government also attracted further controversy over smoking and alcohol laws. After the failure of coalition talks between Solidarität and the HDV, early elections were held in March 3628. Although it lost some of its seats, the overall result was a substantial increase in the NBF's vote share. The party gained seats in three of the five Crownlands, and surged dramatically in Mitrania, where its support had been unexpectedly low in 3626, emerging from the election with ninety-nine seats. Meanwhile, Klaus Zinnberger, despite his earlier pledge to retire, attempted a second political comeback and was elected to the Reichstag. During coalition talks between the LVP, HDV and NBF, an NBF leaker disclosed to the press that Strötzel preferred Sepp Holzinger as Staatsminister, instead of Ariane von Gehrfeld, who had led the LVP into the election, resulting in von Gehrfeld's resignation from the position of LVP Chairwoman. However, coalition talks eventually faltered, leaving the NBF's position in the government in doubt. A grand coalition between Solidarität, the LVP and the HDV was later formed. In September 3629, Schauer died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-eight, resulting in the vacation of the positions of Deputy Chairperson and Chairperson of the Budenlar NBF. Fujita, Martha Hellwegge (who had earlier been elected Hulstria Chairwoman) and Mutschler contested the former position. Although Hellwegge was ahead in the first round, Mutschler's preferences allow Fujita to narrowly win the contest. Afterwards, Mutschler was elected Secretary-General and Karl Hellwegge (wife of Martha) was elected Parliamentary Leader. In Budenlar, Edgar Mittermeier, the NBF's acting Budenlar Chairman (as well as acting Vice Minister-President and Economics Minister), ran to succeed Schauer in Budenlar, but was defeated by Tina Kühl, the staunchly right-wing Bürgermeisterin of Neu-Liore. The earlier agreement between the LVP and NBF was amended so that Kühl, instead of Schauer, would become Minister-President when that office was handed over to the NBF. However, Mittermeier was allowed to remain Vice Minister-President until the hand-over occurred, and to continue as Economics Minister until the next election, when he plans to step down and enter national politics. Kühl became the NBF's first Minister-President at the beginning of February 3630. After Meisnner announced in August 3630 that his government would fund the Socialist Patients Collective, a group of left-wing conspiracy theorists, Doris Etzbach, the NBF's leader in Kuratha, engaged in a high-profile confrontation with the Minister-President. Ordinarily, the government's annual budget is left untouched by legislative committees in accordance with convention; however, Etzbach promised to try to prevent the grant to the SPC from going ahead by filibustering the budget in committee, which would allow her to delay the budget's passage despite her inability to muster enough votes to actually stop it. Although her filibuster failed, the SPC was later implicated in a terrorist attack, forcing Meisnner's resignation. In April 3632, Kühl challenged Strötzel for the leadership, accusing her of having made too many concessions in an attempt to secure a place in government during coalition negotiations. In an acrimonious contest, Strötzel fired back at her challenger and characterised her as naive, saying that compromises were necessary if the NBF was to have a real impact on government policy. The actual vote was held in May. With just fifty-four percent of the vote, Strötzel was re-elected party Chairwoman. She subsequently made good on a promise to sign the LVP's anti-extremism pledge, which obliged the NBF not to co-operate with the newly established far-right parties. In the election of March 3633, the NBF feared substantially losses to the right-wing extremist parties. However, the party lost a smaller-than-expected eighteen seats, as major losses in Budenlar were offset by small gains in the other Crownlands. The NBF became the second-largest non-extremist party in the Reichstag after the LVP. Initially, the party proposed a four-way coalition between itself and the LVP, HDV and Fortschrittspartei (a small centre-left party), with Strötzel as Vice Staatsminister. However, with the collapse of the Fortschrittspartei shortly after the election, the only possible moderate coalition was now between the LVP, NBF, HDV and Solidarität. Eventually, after much wrangling, Strötzel was persuaded to agree to a coalition involving Solidarität despite her earlier reservations. Strötzel was appointed Vice Staatsminister and Interior Minister. Additionally, Fujita, Zinnberger and Karl Hellwegge were appointed Justice, Education and Science Ministers, respectively. Meanwhile, in Mitrania, a coalition between the LVP and NBF became the only realistic government. As a result, the HDV was dumped by the Minister-President, Ellen Theuretzbacher, and Hubert Glathow, the party's local Parliamentary Leader, became Vice Minister-President. In 3635, in accordance with the NBF's promise to be "tough on crime",'' Fujita established a committee of legal and penal experts to create a set of national sentencing guidelines which he hoped would influence sentencing procedures in the Crownlands (as most criminal justice issues are handled by Crownland governments). A year later, Zinnberger proposed legislation to reduce the school leaving age from twenty-one to eighteen. This led to a schism in the coalition, as the HDV opposed the measure and voted against it in the Reichstag. Mutschler, who had returned to the position of Parliamentary Leader, vigorously attacked the HDV's opposition on the floor of the Reichstag. Zinnberger later caused more trouble for the NBF by endorsing Borkenstein's education reforms, saying that he would like to implement similar reforms nationally, and by echoing a call by Theuretzbacher for increased agricultural subsidies (which was opposed by the LVP until the party made a u-turn). Zinnberger was allegedly forced out of Cabinet by Strötzel in April 3637 in response to tensions within the governing coalition, although he made no mention of this happening (if it did indeed happen) in his emotional resignation statement, during which he announced that he would retire from politics at the following general election in 3638. Karl Hellwegge was appointed to replace Zinnberger as Education Minister. Meanwhile, Jens Heidler, a low-key junior minister, was promoted to Cabinet to replace Hellwegge. The election of March 3638 produced a fairly neutral, if slightly disappointing, result for the NBF. Despite the collapse of Solidarität, releasing a large working-class vote, the NBF gained only four seats, raising its numbers in the Reichstag from eighty-one to eighty-five, and remained in a position to be a participant in the next government, with all NBF Ministers being retained in their previous positions except Heidler, who was promoted to Infrastructure and Transport Minister. The results in the Crownlands revealed a more variable outcome than the national average suggested. In Kuratha, the NBF made major gains after the party nearly doubled its vote. In Mitrania, on the other hand, the party suffered serious losses, possibly as a result of Zinnberger's semi-forced resignation. The party's Budenlar branch was also severly reduced in size. In the other Crownlands, the results were not significantly different from those of the 3633 election. After the election of 3638, Karl Hellwegge embarked on a major reform of educational policy. He commissioned a sweeping review of cirriculum guidelines, directing the panel reviewing the guidelines to work to raise standards and increased educational choice by broadening the selection of elective subjects and whittling down compulsory subjects to those necessary. To enforce minimum standards, responsibility for assessing students at the end of their secondary education was moved to the national government, although standardised testing would otherwise remain a Crownland government responsibility. Additionally, to complement and, if necessary, replace, Crownland education inspectors, Hellwegge established an Education Board which would carry out school inspections on behalf of the national government. He also sought to introduce vocational training, which had previously been at the tertiary level of education alone, into secondary education, providing national government funds and oversight for establishing secondary vocational training schools, most of which would be attached to existing vocational training colleges. Fujita (3640 - 3644) In early 3640, Mutschler stood down as Parliamentary Leader and announced his retirement from politics. By the end of the year, a broader leadership change had taken place. Strötzel stood down as Chairwoman, and both Fujita and Karl Hellwegge ran for the leadership. With the outgoing leader's endorsement, the former won the leadership election, although only narrowly, and in his acceptance speech signalled his support for tax cuts which had been proposed by the Minister-President of Budenlar, Hartmut Schellhoff. Meanwhile, Werner Luscher, the party's successful leader in Kuratha, was elected to the post of Deputy Chairman, and Tanja Smolka, a staunchly right-wing protoge of Kühl, became Secretary-General. All of the NBF's Ministers remained in office, although Fujita replaced Strötzel as Vice Staatsminister. Due to the strongly pro-business policies of Minister-President Hartmut Schellhoff and Labsburg Bürgermeister Nathalie Lahnsteiger, Budenlar experienced rapid economic growth in the late 3630s and early 3640s. As a result, traffic at Labsburg International Airport began to exceed capacity. Responding to concerns from aviation experts and airline executives, Heidler entered into discussions with Schellhoff and Lahnsteiger regarding the possibility of expanding the airport by constructing a new domestic terminal and third runway with funds raised primarily from the private sector instead of from taxation. Lahnsteiger in particular responded positively, and stated that she wished to embed the airport expansion in a larger project involving the creation of a new commerical district in Labsburg. The project has started, but there has been no actual construction to date. The election of March 3643 was another status quo election, where the NBF neither gained nor lost many seats, resulting in a net increase of four seats. In terms of votes, it was, by a small margin, the NBF's best election ever. However, despite the increased vote and vote share, this was a fairly underwhelming result, given that the election of a new party Chairman was intended to reinvigorate the party. The election was largely characterised by the stunning success of the LVP, which secured a very substantial plurality and won (in terms of vote share) every single Crownland except for Hulstria. The governing coalition's majority was increased by fourteen. Scandal struck the NBF in late 3643, forcing the resignation of its Parliamentary Leader. Mittermeier was accused of abusing parliamentary expenses by claiming expenses to renovate his homes and selling them for a substantial profit despite the rules mandating that expenses could only be claimed for repairs or minor alterations, not major renovations. Additionally, he was accused of designating these homes primary residences, instead of secondary residences, to avoid paying capital gains tax on the profit from their sale. He thus made seven-digit profits. Mittermeier was also accused of claiming expenses for non-work-related travel. Despite initially refusing to step down, aggressive interrogation by members of the Reichstag Ethics Committee and pressure from his party forced his resignation as Parliamentary Leader and as a MdR. He was replaced by Takesi Ishikawa, a freshman MdR and Karl Hellwegge's former chief of staff. Despite the scandal, snap elections called for November 3643 resulted in major gains for the NBF. The party gained seats in every Crownland except for Kuratha (where its seat share did not change), giving it an expanded parliamentary faction of 124, an increase of thirty-five and the party's best ever result by every metric (apart from increase in vote share). Fujita's leadership, which had been under pressure since the party's mediocre result earlier in the year, now became substantially more secure, although the possibility of a LVP-NBF majority government began to cause further issues for him later on. Luscher (3644 - 3651) In early 3644, the LVP base, and certain senior members including Schellhoff, Lahnsteiger and the new Minister-President of Kuratha, Jürgen Scheuermann, began pressing for a LVP-NBF coalition which excluded the LVP's traditional coalition partner, the HDV, despite the opposition of Kirchgasser. Shortly afterwards, the NBF base began exerting similar pressure on Fujita to support a right-wing coalition without the HDV. Fujita refused to support such a coalition, resulting in a leadership challenge from Luscher, a leading right-winger who strongly supported a right-wing government. With fifty-nine percent of the vote, Luscher successfully deposed Fujita to become party Chairman. He was replaced by Jens Heidler was Deputy Chairman. Shortly afterwards, after losing a party plebiscite on the same issue, Kirchgasser stepped down as the LVP leader and, after a narrow leadership election, was replaced by the somewhat obscure Franz Graumann. After the elections of Luscher and Graumann to the leaderships of their respective parties, a major Cabinet reshuffled took place. Graumann, as expected, became Staatsminister, with Luscher becoming Vice Staatsminister and Interior Minister. Heidler was promoted to the office of Defence Minister (previously occupied by a member of the HDV), while Fujita remained in office as Justice Minister, but lost the post of Vice Staatsminister. Smolka entered Cabinet as Education Minister, succeeding Karl Hellwegge, while Ishikawa, another newcomer, succeeded Heidler. Wolfgang Hilgers, the former Vice Minister-President of Budenlar, was appointed Parliamentary Leader, replacing Ishikawa. Despite the fact that the LVP-NBF coalition was supposed to be ideologically fairly uniform, rifts soon occurred. After Economics Minister Mark Frieslinger suggested a policy of aggressive economic liberalisation under the name "''turbo-capitalism", including weakening consumer protection laws and relaxing regulations on casinos, Higlers immediately expressed his party's displeasure at these proposals, and publicly urged caution over the LVP's economic agenda. The coalition regained some unity after a consensus on cuts to allegedly unuseful courses in tertiary education, another division emerged when the NBF voted in the Reichstag to ban prostitution, causing fury in the ranks of the socially liberal LVP. Lahnsteiger was especially irate as the banning of prostitution undermined her plans for the construction of a vast entertainment district in the vicinity of the expanded airport in Labsburg. Once again, however, conflict was matched with reconciliation, when Hilgers aggressively attacked the de facto leader of the ousted LVP establishment, Erik Fuchswalder, after he expressed his hope for the removal of the hard-right libertarian faction of the LVP after the next general election. In October 3647, Justice Martha Geiseler of the Supreme Court stepped down due to health issues. Shortly afterwards, Fujita resigned as Justice Minister, hastening by just over a year his already announced exit from politics. Many speculated that he had resigned from Cabinet as he wished to make a move from politics to the judiciary. This speculation was confirmed when he was later appointed to the Supreme Court. Anette Mandel, the former Justice Minister of Budenlar and a newly-elected MdR who had entered the Reichstag in a by-election, was appointed to replace Fujita. During the run-up to the election of November 3648, the NBF campaigned for the continuation of the LVP-NBF coalition government, and its senior partner did likewise. The election campaign was interrupted by an exchange of words between the Indralan government and the Hulstrian and Gao-Soton government; Luscher's strong rebuke against the Indralans was seen to have stirred nationalistic sentiment in the NBF's favour, allowing the NBF to lose only a small fraction of a percent of the popular vote and retain all of its seats. Due to high turnout, the election was the party's all-time high in terms of votes. However, the LVP lost a substantial number of seats, most of them to more moderate parties. As a result, the government lost its majority. However, both Graumann and Luscher agreed to try to retain power as a minority government. After two fairly uneventual years for the government and the NBF, Luscher announced that, having consulted with leading members of his party, he would support an official merger of his party and the LVP, saying that the combined strength of a united party could not "be matched by any other party". Graumann later signalled his approval of the proposal, and plebiscites of the respective party bases returned substantial majorities in favour of the merger - just over seventy percent of the NBF membership voted to merge. During negotiations regarding the precise form of a merger, and the date of the merger, the two parties agreed to officially merge in November 3651, forming the Liberale Bürgerunion (Liberal Civic Union; LBU). Graumann remained at the head of the merged party, while Luscher was elected Deputy Chairman. In snap elections held shortly thereafter, the new party won the largest plurality of any party in close to a century, including pluralities in every Crownland. Election results Structure The Nationales Bürgerforum was initially known for its loose heirarchy which relies on grassroots participation instead of a powerful organisational structure, where the party leadership exercised less power than that of most other political parties in Hulstria and Gao-Soto. However, as the party grew into a serious political force, the party organisation became more structured and an effective so-called party machine developed. Nevertheless, throughout its existence, the party was still characterised by a higher level of grassroots participation than some of the more established parties. The Executive Committee of the NBF was the governing body of the party. It consisted of nine members. Four were ex officio members: the Chairperson, who led the party; the Deputy Chairperson; the Parliamentary Leader, who led the party's faction in the Reichstag; and the Secretary-General, who was ostensibly responsible for administration but also played a major unofficial political role. The remaining five members of the Committee were delegates from the Crownland branches, each of which elected one delegate. This structure was mirrored at the Crownland level and the local government level (although with a Council Leader instead of a Parliamentary Leader). The Chairperson at each level of the party was responsible for appointing the party's senior spokespeople who form the party frontbench. Leadership Policies and ideology Economic policy The economic policy of the Nationales Bürgerforum was broadly neoliberal, advocating low taxation, deregulation and free trade. However, the party did make a number of exceptions of these policies, most notably in that it sometimes promoted protectionist policies as befitted its populist stance (for example, it once pressed - unsuccessfully - for a ban on foreign majority ownership of public companies). Furthermore, it tended to promote the interests of small businesses over those of larger businesses, and it opposed what it sees as excessive union influence in the economy. Social policy In the field of social policy, the NBF supported a hybrid approach whereby the government was responsible for investment into public services such as health, education and welfare, and for maintaining high levels of access for those who may not otherwise have access to these services, but where individuals had choice and control over public services. As such, the NBF strongly supported private healthcare, independent schools, private pension schemes and the like, and backed the government's plans to allow local communities to take over the provision of services where they could do so more effectively than various other government bodies. In terms of its approach to moral issues, the NBF did not have a defined position due to the wide divergence of opinion on issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion within the party. However, the NBF made clear that it stodd against political correctness. International and security policy In foreign policy, the NBF was somewhat isolationist, and believed that Hulstria and Gao-Soto's over-riding aim in foreign affairs was its national interest. This means that the NBF was sceptical of foreign humanitarian intervention (and foreign intervention more generally), and pushed for cuts to foreign aid. It also advocated a reduction in immigration, a policy which was recently introduced with NBF support. The NBF took a strong law-and-order approach to crime and security, believing in giving the police strong powers and tough criminal sentences, although it claimed that it worked to balance security concerns with civil liberties. One of the first acts of the NBF when it entered government was to introduce tough new national sentencing guidelines. Internal factions The NBF had a number of unofficial internal factions, which had no formal structure and were not recognised by the party leadership. Although largely united on issues of foreign policy, party members had widely divergent opinions on economic and social policy: they ranged from centrist to hard-line neoliberal on one axis, and from ultra-conservative to libertarian on the other. Although the NBF as a whole was populist, the party's numerous working-class supporters most clearly expressed this tendency. They formed the largest internal grouping within the party. On economic issues, they tended to be centrist to centre-right, and were moderately conservative, although they tended to see economic issues as the most important. They were strongly patriotic and often held nationalist, even racist, views, although the party leadership frowned on open racism. These party members were scarcely distinguishable from another substantial group of supporters - the urban petty bourgeois. Traditionalists formed another major part of the party membership. This section of the party was concentrated in rural areas, especially in Mitrania. Traditionalists tended to hold similar political views to the NBF's blue-collar workers, but were likely to believe that government policy should prioritise agriculture over industry. Their conservatism was frequently manifested in a strong sense of nostalgia and a general resistance to change (unlike many other conservatives, who view change as acceptable except where social mores are concerned). Another major group of NBF supporters were libertarians. They were the only hard-line economic right-wingers in the party and dd not endorse the conservative of most other NBF members. In other words, they supported both economic and personal freedom. They differed, however, from LVP libertarians in the sense that they were often willing to make exceptions to their ideology to restrict large corporations, especially foreign corporations, believing that excessive corporate influence could undermine genuine freedom for the masses. The NBF also included a number of ultra-conservatives. They tended to range from centre-right to right-wing on economic issues, but it was their attitude to social issues that marked them out - they were strongly against what they view as moral permissiveness, and were very supportive of a greater role for religion. Their strong conservatism was often paired with homophobia and racism, although the party leadership tried to attenuate these tendencies. A fifth group of supporters was the disparate group of politically disaffected individuals who did not necessarily support the party's policies or general ideological leanings - a handful disagreed outright - but instead supported it as an act of protest against the major parties, which they view as elitist and out-of touch. However, these people were seen as unreliable supporters and are far more likely to vote for the party than actually join it. After the NBF entered national and Crownland governments, the number of protest voters supporting the party droped markedly. Category:Political parties in Hulstria Category:Greater Hulstria